Swift System | Swift Code Definition - Economist

The concept of the SWIFT System can be clarified, as it is the association of financial communications that connects banks, forms the infrastructure, links financial messages between all banks in the world, and processes millions of daily banking transactions in more than 200 countries every day for more than 11 thousand financial institutions.

SWIFT stands for Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication.

We find that the goal of the SWIFT company is to secure the functioning of an international network of electronic communications between representatives of the financial markets and to provide an automated means for settling payments by introducing unified standards in international banking relations.

Hence, the first and nominal objective of the system is not to deny the exchange transaction, meaning that none of the dealers can deny the existence of a transaction that has taken place, so SWIFT is a documentary act in the total of completed transactions, regardless of the amount, and this is to protect the shareholders. Therefore, if a bank pays an amount to another bank, the paying bank Claims to guarantee receipt of this payment.

The Swift code consists of 8 digits when it refers to the main branch of the bank or 11 when it refers to one of the bank’s branches.

1- AAAA, which is the first 4 letters that refer to the bank code, and they are only letters.

2- BB, is the country code and is only letters and refers to the binary form of the country code.

3- CC, is the site code and is letters and numbers.

4- DDD, refers to the bank branch, and therefore it is not present in the main branch, or the code XXX can be given, which also may be letters and numbers.